It’s too bad that Akira Kurosawa’s last film isn’t one of his best; it feels slow and contrived and a bit too steeped in self-congratulation in the same way the later works of his hero John Ford did. But this story of a retired teacher and his devoted students is a fitting testament in other ways. Besides the touching homage it pays to Ford in all the scenes depicting rituals of male society, it is also a tender and sometimes funny paean to Kurosawa’s own experience—that helpless will to live just a little longer, do just a little more, which tugged at him to the end.
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